If you know who Sir Mixalot is. . .

Holy cow this is funny.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

"Who cares about Derek Zoolander anyway? The man has only one look, for Christ's sake! Blue Steel? Ferrari? Le Tigra? They're the same face! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

Now. . .
seen on the side of the bus:
Mun Geun Yeong, Korean TV and commercial star.

these pictures were side by side.






Now, for comparison. A North American model showing off HIS versatility:


except, one's a satire, and one's in earnest.


Pretty much, this is the only note dear Mun Geun Yeong plays. Last summer, she was LITERALLY on the side of every third bus and billboard, stumping different products. She earned the nickname "Korea's little sister" and she was the flavour of the month. She's a TV star, and while she still had her baby fat, was ridiculously cute (so much that she never bothered with things like versatility or talent). Pretty much, imagine seeing this every where you turn. (She had other commercials for other products, but the only thing that really changed were her clothes.





I hope she doesn't mind if I poke at her balloon. Maybe she can go cry on a pile of cash to feel better. Korea supersaturates their celebrities -- tv, movies, posters, commercials -- ubiquity seems to be the catchword of Korean celebrity agents. They don't seem to realize a little mystery adds staying power. A little of the old, "leave'em wanting more"

Anyway, thought for the day. Celebrity worship and star overexposure is annoying, in any culture.

P.S.: 100th post!

A Tribute to the Magic Umbrella

I bought this Umbrella in Osaka, when it was hinting at rain.



I should have known then. You see, as soon as I bought this umbrella, it stopped hinting at rain and cleared up, leaving me, nonplussed, carrying an umbrella around when I didn't need it.

I liked this umbrella, because it had a cord instead of a little plastic loop at the end, which meant I could tie it around my bag strap instead of having to carry it in my hand any time I wanted to bring it with me.

It was only after about a month of bitter cold in March (the first of the odd weather this year) that I noticed something strange. First, I attributed it to Murphy's Law, but later I realized I had purchased a magic umbrella over in Osaka.

You see, this umbrella controlled the weather. Every (I mean every) time I brought the umbrella with me to work, it didn't rain; every time I left it at home, it DID rain. All through late March, April, and May, this continued, so consistently it could only have been magic. I began to boast of my magic umbrella, really, to anybody who would listen. It became a bit of a running joke.

Then, in late June, I decided to leave the umbrella in Korea while I went to Canada. I was lucky, in retrospect, that rain didn't follow me to every destination in Canada, but instead, a far sadder thing happened. Probably from disuse, the magic umbrella lost its power to control the weather.

You see, in August, I carried the umbrella every day. . . but it rained every day, too. This brilliant umbrella lost its power to control the weather, and then, as if to really hammer it home that it was no good anymore, on one of those ghastly rainy August days, it started dropping water on me, right through its cloth rain-shield. The poor thing had had it. So, I have retired the magic umbrella, and purchased a normal umbrella, whose only power is shielding me from the rain (except mist rain on windy days, which blows right up under the umbrella, pleasantly flecking my face with cool rain, and [if my Korean friends are correct] burning all my hair follicles and causing me to go bald.)

Here in Korea, many women have two umbrellas. One for rain, which keeps the acid rain from burning off their hair, and another light one for the sun, to keep the sun from tanning their skin into a darker shade (big no-no in Korean beauty standards). I'm not sure what happens when they bring the rain umbrella and it's sunny, or vice versa. Things must get very confusing.

Meanwhile, the weather in August was the worst of any month in my life. Yes, worse even than those three weeks of cold rain and grey skies in Fraser Valley Februaries. It rained almost every morning, which is tiresome in itself, but then, in the afternoon, it totally defied normal "rainy morning rules". Instead of brightening up into a nice, moderate day, where all the humidity has rained out in the morning, all the rain on the ground, and more moisture in the sky combined for a hammer/anvil double-whammy attack, and made the whole world as muggy and hot as a steam bath. Your skin melts off and you can't move, and the sun's bright, but then every once in a while it starts raining (sometimes really hard) so you better not be caught without an umbrella. . . yeah. it sucked. Most muggy Augusts have at least a few really brilliant beautiful days between the dog-days, but this entire month had no reprieve. Just disgusting.

THIS is why people are finally worrying about climate change. Because they NOTICE it.

Anyway, a moment of silence for the magic umbrella's untimely demise.



OK that's enough.

And let's hear it for September!

It's gotten interesting choosing subject matter for the blog, now that my Korean students, as well as my funky uncle, my dear friends, and, for all I know, total strangers, are reading it. Just when I think I can write anything I want, one of my students mentions a post or something.

What can you do, except write as if you might one day run for office? I don't know. I'll try not to do that, though.

Love you all, and hope to continue giving you an honest slice of my life.

Love:
Rob

This post has a bad word in it.

If posting a comic that uses the "F" word will change your opinion of me. . . I'm sorry I disappointed you. But I'm not apologizing, because real life has the "F" word in it, too, sometimes. (And nudity -- parents are STRONGLY cautioned that some parts of real life may not be suitable for viewing by small children, families, or the discernment-impaired.)



XKCD is a comic my brother-in-law showed me. It varies from way over my head, to extremely nerdy, to awesome, and from "I know I got it but it really wasn't funny" to snarky, to drop-dead-hilarious. Here's a recent issue. I like it.


As the comic homepage itself says:

Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

Another try.

New survey.

I was in a sandwich shop, and I heard some music in there that got me thinking, what's the PERFECT music to play in a sandwich shop? I mean, it's an interesting question for a variety of establishments, but there are a number of factors that play in, depending on the place.

1. familiarity. For some kinds of shops (most), familiar music is the best. Especially for drinking establishments, where people love to warm over the old rock classics. I can't remember the last time I went to a sit-down bar and DIDN'T hear Brown Eyed Girl. I'm told another kind of bar can't go a night without playing "Paradise City" by Guns'n'Roses (I usually avoid those kinds of places. In N. America, you're likely to run into a lot of cowboy hats and in Korea, you're likely to run into a lot of American G.I.'s there, which amounts to about the same: rednecks.) Bars like playing music people can sing along with. (Everybody say Hey Ya for Gnarls Barkley!)

Personally, I think sandwich shops and bars should play music that's familiar, like "Hey! I love this song" not familiar like, "Criminy! I swear Bob Marley's ghost is haunting me!" (My friend swears Bob Marley is the most overplayed artist in the world. I think it's a toss-up between Bob and the Beatles, with the winner depending on whether you count other artists covering the Beatles or not. Think about it. EVERY place that involves a beach and alcohol probably plays Bob once a night or more; a LARGE percentage of shops selling beach-ish goods [beach towels, tourist keychains, sandals, postcards] probably plays him once a day, and any establishment where patrons may purchase, use, or visit after using, ganga, will probably play Bob frequently, while any place far from a beach that has a beach/Carribean theme plays Marley on repeat. . . that's a flippin' lot!)

Tempo: tea rooms and wine bars ought to have slow tempoed music (they can even get away with classical), while coffee shops and sandwich shops want to have music that's upbeat but not too rousing. Bars want music that's more intense again -- hence the constant retreads of Doors, Stones and Green Day songs. (When will you ever hear THOSE three in a sentence together again, other than the sentence "Hey! I bet you can't use Doors, Stones and Green Day in a sentence that doesn't also include the words "conversely" "on the other hand" or "unlike" or "much much better than"!)

Volume: You want stuff that can fade into the background if you want it to be unobtrusive, but. . .

Quality: you also want it good enough that if somebody IS listening they aren't thinking "Cripes almighty! Boyz II Men? We either need to go, or somebody can just kill me now!" (Yes, I'm a hater now. Yes, this was my favourite song when I was twelve. I'll come clean.) I've been places where the music totally ruined the experience, and I've actually asked if we can go to a different place if the music is crappy enough -- music in a coffee shop is like cuisine during a trip: it'll make or break the experience. Nice beaches but bad food will dampen the entire vacation, turning it from an "it was great!" trip to an "It was great, but. . . " trip, and good coffee/food but atrocious music will make me never want to re-visit a coffee shop or restaurant. Like good/bad kimchi in a Korean restaurant. It's the final test of a place's awesomeousity. (I love inventating words.)

You certainly don't want to play something grating or unfamiliar unless you cater to a specific audience, or you're in a Portland coffee shop, so I've decided the perfect music for a sandwich shop or coffee shop is . . . Stevie Wonder. (For coffee shops, I will accept cool jazz as a good, but not original, choice.)

Who DOESN'T like Stevie Wonder? Nobody, that's who. He's not too loud, but if you DO listen, he's really good; he's happy and upbeat, but not cheesy (especially Songs in the Key of Life -- NOBODY else could have pulled off "Isn't She Lovely" -- a song about his newborn daughter, without rating eight out of ten or higher on the tripe scale). He's familiar, but not "Not this song again," familiar.

Marvin Gaye and Ella Fitzgerald are also good choices.

So the question of the day is,

What do you think is the best music for a coffee shop or diner?

Also: what type of establishment, as a rule, has the worst music (after country bars)? My vote goes to family restaurants like Swiss Chalet or ABC's.

P.S.: 1.

and 2.

(second one's funnier)